A Life in the Day

Here are some of my favorite first lines in books I've loved. In the deserted men's restroom at the back of Middleton Community College, Sam Keller knelt on the tile, braced his hands against Keith Jameson's thighs, and broke his mother's heart. - Special Delivery , Heidi Cullinan I'll write you every day. - Beyond Eden , Kele Moon I, Amanda Wilkinson, hereby give the instructors of San Francisco Sex University permission to fuck me in the ass. - Sex University: Physical Education , Louisa Bacio Jason Carrillo walked around the block a third time, working up his courage to go into the brownstone. - Rainbow Boys, Alex Sanchez The bomb detonated while Grier was still two blocks away. - State of Mind , Libby Drew From the second he set foot in my classroom, I knew he was trouble. - Allegro Vivace , Cat Grant You're going to want to split those bitches up. - Belle Starr , Belinda McBride You have to understand, Max, this has nothing to do with you."...

Photo courtesy of Beauty in Everything I think all of us, at one point or another, can remember a book we could not put down. That story whose characters beckoned you to keep reading and whose plot was so intriguing you could NOT look away. You lose yourself in the story and when it's over feel a little sad about putting the book down and walking away from it. While reading queries and submissions by my clients over the past few weeks, I've realized that the stories I want to sell are the ones I feel saddened by walking away from after reading them. The stories whose message resonates with me and makes me physically ache for more. I've found that these stories are usually the ones the authors did not intend to write in the first place but the stories their characters wanted to tell. They're not always written for a specific market or genre (often times they straddle genres and break all kinds of "rules" in the genres they want to sell them in) but they...